Here is the number of players who played each variant this week , according to the official lichess stats...
ULTRABULLET 2,850
BULLET 30,692
BLITZ 81,614
CLASSICAL 67,358
CRAZYHOUSE 2,945
CHESS960 1,632
KING OF THE HILL 675
THREE CHECK 1,127
ANTICHESS 2,024
ATOMIC 1,485
HORDE 1,013
RACING KINGS 573
You can easily understand many things with this list!
Very Interesting! I should start working on my KOTH and Racing Kings ratings to get those trophies on my profile. ;)
Wow Racing Kings is almost as popular as KOTH...surprising.
I am just started to play Chess960 for more stamina for my brain-muscle.
1,632 this week is a low number. I can see now why is so difficult the pairing.
Some conclusions...
A very small percentage of the members play variants.
Ultrabullet isn't popular , maybe it's too "crazy"...
Chess960 is unexpectedly unpopular.
Racing Kings is very unpopular (in my opinion , this is unfair).
King Of The Hill is also unpopular (I didn't expect this , I thought it was well liked).
Crazyhouse is doing better , mainly because of the regular tournaments and the strong personalities of some masters.
For 95% of the players , there is only regular chess in reasonable time controls.
I wouldn't really expect this, but there are more than twice as many Classical players as Bullet players. I believe we need a new rating category for longer classical games, over 25+0. If Lichess has no problem splitting up Bullet ratings, then there should certainly be no problem splitting up Classical ratings.
lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/feature-request-new-rating-category-for-longer-time-controlsI feel like a variant like Extinction Chess would do way better than Racing Kings. It was also calssified as "doable" by a developer before. It seems like a pretty decent idea...
I feel like extinction chess would be easy to program, but too simplistic to enjoy for very long. You can play extinction chess on
BrainKing.com, but it's a correspondence-only site. I feel like Racing Kings is better.
Ultrabullet = best :P but also the reason its unpopular is because its just one time control. if hyperbullet were included in the rating category it would be bigger. so its kind of biased vs ultra
I got a top 100 Racing Kings trophy and I barely know the game. Just ran fast in handful of games and got it.
